My back’s f*cked and I’m tired: My 5-minute fix for stiff bodies and overloaded brains

Four no-nonsense moves to undo the damage of desk life, doom scrolling, and general daily chaos.

Let me be clear: I’m not saying stretching will fix your life.
But it might stop your spine from crumbling into dust before the end of the year.

If you’ve been listening to my podcast Get A Grip, you’ll know I’m deep into what I lovingly call my prehistoric fck* era. Which basically means: horny for comfort. Obsessed with low-impact movement. And not even a little bit sorry about my obsession with stretching.

Yin yoga is my current kink. It’s basically lying down with intention. Big sleepy lizard energy. Sometimes I convince myself I’ve meditated when I’ve really just sulked quietly in child's pose - but still. Magic.

Do I do it every day? Absolutely not.

Some mornings I’m lucky if I manage to wrestle myself into leggings before someone’s asking me where their school shoes are. But when I do stretch - really stretch - something in me unclenches.

Physically, yes. But also emotionally. Like I’ve shaken off a layer of invisible tension that’s been clinging to me since the last time someone said “let’s circle back.”

Let’s not, actually.
Let’s stretch instead.

The desk years (aka: why you feel older than you are!)

Here’s what I know: we were not built to live like this.
Bent over laptops. Hunched in traffic. Slumped over our phones like Victorian ghosts. Our bodies are in constant alert mode while our legs are dead asleep. We’re stress statues.

You wake up with a crick in your neck, your lower back feels like a filing cabinet, and by mid-afternoon your shoulders are so tight they’re practically earrings. And sure, you could blame age - but this isn’t aging. This is self-inflicted structural collapse.

The stress has to go somewhere. And if you’re not moving, stretching, doing something to let it out? It’s storing itself in your spine like your body’s keeping a receipts folder of every annoying thing that’s ever happened to you.

Here’s the bit no one tells you:
Stretching isn’t just about flexibility. It’s a reset button.
It breaks the cycle.
It says, “Hey love, you’re not a filing cabinet. You’re a human. Let’s unf*ck your body.”

Here’s where I make you work for it

Subscribers, come this way - I’ve got four posture-saving stretches that take five minutes, require no gym, no gear, and no grace. They're weirdly satisfying and mildly addictive. Like ASMR for your joints

I’ve even chucked in a video *tutorial for good measure.
*I use the term tutorial lightly